Looking to promote your new start-up business? There are millions of possible methods, but in this article, we’ll detail four of the most effective ways to kick-start your company’s growth.
Invest In a Great Content Marketing Strategy:
The best product or service in the world is effectively worthless if no-one knows about it. Marketing brings your products to people’s attention. A well-run marketing campaign will target potential customers and send them sliding down the sales funnel, increasing your profits and building brand awareness (which, by itself, will lead to more business). Pay particular attention to growing your email sign-up list; it’s a cost-effective way to reach interested parties, and converts at a high percentage.
Always Be Testing:
Bryan Eisenberg makes his career promoting conversion optimization (the act of converting website visitors into email subscribers and paying customers). His advice? Always Be Testing! A website receiving hundreds of thousands of views and generating little revenue is failing miserably. Use Google Content Experiments to test variations of your landing pages in order to see which ones convert the best. Even improving conversions by a few tenths of a percent can have a big impact over time. Below, you’ll find some possible things to test:
- Text used on sales/sign-up buttons (Ex.: “Buy Now” vs. “Add to Cart” vs. “Start Your Journey!”)
- Location of sales/sign-up buttons
- Various types of promotional copy
- Various sales images
You can perform similar tests with pay-per-click advertising on Google, Facebook, etc. It’s best if you only change one item per test, such as a red button vs. a blue button, or a button below the copy vs. a button above the copy. This eliminates the chance that some other factor is affecting conversion rates.
It sounds small, but changing a single phrase can have a drastic effect on sales. DELL altered one phrase on their website (from “learn more” to “help me choose”), which led to millions of dollars in increased sales. Amazon, too, has spent their entire existence testing and altering their website to increase conversions.
Reinvest Your Profits:
Once you’ve found a winning marketing formula, reinvest your profits into those areas to spur further growth. It’s important to keep an eye on returns, though; publishing one blog post per week may be all your customers want. Doubling your output may only lead to a 5% increase in websites visits, or even an overall decrease as your audiences feel inundated with new information. Reinvest in your strategies wisely — but definitely reinvest!
Make Personal Connections:
You’ve heard the phrase “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” and it’s alarmingly accurate. Never underestimate the value of a relevant connection in your field. Maybe that new connection will provide a new product idea, or know a quick-fix solution to a major problem, or introduce you to the person who becomes a valuable asset. That’s the thing about personal connections: you just never know what insight or contribution they might make.
In order to make these connections, you have to put forth some effort. Attend meet-ups, conferences, happy hours – anything you can do to meet other people. Always keep a supply of business cards handy!
You can also do this online. Follow bloggers in your field and comment on/share their articles. Get to know them, and do so without shameless self-promotion. There may even come a time when they guest-post on your blog, or you on theirs. If you see an opportunity, grab it!
In summary: growing a start-up business isn’t easy, but it’s certainly doable. If you’d like some help, plan to attend one of our upcoming events! You can learn more about our products and our services on our website.